After waiting almost a month for the 3930 mobo to re-stock, I finally received my DS machine. I am very pleased about certain aspects of my rig, and disappointed about others. This review will cover all issues, pros and cons, to date.

Once I hooked up the machine, there were, unfortunately, three major problems:

(1) the three fans on the top and two on the back were not the upgraded cooler master R4's with blue LED lighting. They were the standard fans. DS dropped the ball on this one, and will be shipping out to me 5 performance fans for replacement.

The second issue with the computer is the fact that once turned on, the system only recognized the 160GB SSD drive, and did not recognize the 1TB data drive. Upon investigation and with the help of DS technical support it was discovered that the SATA cable going into the data drive had broken off from the metal clip that is used to release the cable form the drive. the metal clip was still hanging out of the hard drive. I believe that when the insulation material was stuffed inside the chassis, the person installing same may have accidentally caused the break. I don't think this is something that would happen during shipping - but who knows. Here is a pic showing the broken white tip of the SATA cable:

The third problem is that there appeared to be bubbling along the inside right plexi glass panel and top panel. Upon inspection, it was determined that the bubbling was actually water from the LC system. The water was on both panels and there was water sitting on top of the water reservoir. I wiped these down and tech support had me tighten the top of the reservoir which will hopefully resolve the issue. Here are pics of the water on the panels:

FED EX sure did a number on your shipping carton. Gouged pretty good in that one corner. Hope your computer came out damage free from that abuse! FED EX strikes again. Mines intransit right now with FED EX. I got my fingers crossed.

DS is sending me a new hard drive for replacement which will hopefully resolve the data drive issue. Other than these hiccups, I think the machine looks great. I have run a few games on the SSD drive and they are smoking fast. The 30" dell monitor is running at 2500x1600 resolution and looks gorgeous. Here are some pics showing the wonderful configuration:

Yeah it does look like FedEx beat the hell out of that box and that can definitely cause the issues with the HDD and LC so it's hard to blame DS for that.

The issues with the fans those is an oversight on your part. The configuration system specifically says the fan upgrade only includes up to 6 fans. You can clearly see all 6 fans in front were upgraded so that would be the extent of the fan upgrade you paid for.

The only exception would be if you called them during or after you placed your order and paid them extra for the additional 5 fans, top and rear, to be upgraded too. I did not see anything noted here that you did that, only that you were upset that not all the fans were upgraded. But again the fan upgrade only covers 6 fans.

Looks like an amazing machine. Sorry about your issues that either shipping or packing caused, but glad they seem to be able to be resolved. I should be getting mine tomorrow if the tracking is correct. Your post has given me insight on what to look for. Again sorry got your issues. But thanks for posting them. Your machine is a beast good luck with it.

Yeah it does look like FedEx beat the hell out of that box and that can definitely cause the issues with the HDD and LC so it's hard to blame DS for that. The issues with the fans those is an oversight on your part. The configuration system specifically says the fan upgrade only includes up to 6 fans. You can clearly see all 6 fans in front were upgraded so that would be the extent of the fan upgrade you paid for. The only exception would be if you called them during or after you placed your order and paid them extra for the additional 5 fans, top and rear, to be upgraded too. I did not see anything noted here that you did that, only that you were upset that not all the fans were upgraded. But again the fan upgrade only covers 6 fans.

Hi JM! The special order for the ADDITIONAL high performance fans was done telephonically. I paid for up to 12 fan replacements. DS has fully acknowledged its error and is shipping to me replacement fans.

One thing I want to emphasize is that DS has been excellent in dealing with these issues. They are incredibly responsive and very concerned that everything is resolved. They have exceeded my expectations thus far in the technical support department.

Thank you for taking the time to post your review and for taking pictures. Your system was definitely thrown around pretty hard by Fedex. I'm glad that you were able to speak to our team and get things ironed out.

In summary, it looks like the issues you had were the LED fans and the shipping abuse on your system.

On a good note, you don't need to worry, as you're our valued customer and our goal is to ensure you are happy with your system. We'll do our best to take care of you.

LED Fans:

I reviewed your invoice and there may have been a misunderstanding, as the team did install six LED fans, but, I understand that you requested additional fans. I'm glad that we have sent this out now.

SATA connector:

I would find it hard to see the internal foam break the connector, as it's really soft and expands slowly. It could be the shocks from shipping which could have caused the hard drive cage to bounce and hit the bottom of the chassis which broke the connector.

Fluid:

I've seen a reserver/barbs/etc cause a leak if they are stressed enough to one side. I hope that you were able to resolve this issue, if the leaking still occurs, or if there is any other issue, we'll definitely take care of you.

Thanks Alex. No worries on the LED lighting. There were a lot of changes made after the initial order was placed, so I understand the confusion. Will it be simple to replace the fans with the new ones once I receive them?

I have no idea what actually caused the SATA connector to break, and your suggestion about shipping shocks makes sense. I am hoping that replacing the hard drive will be fairly easy.

The fluid issue is hopefully resolved now. I was a little scared at first when I saw water leaking on the inside of the chassis. Hopefully this is a non-issue moving forward.

So after waiting another week, I finally received the cooler master replacement fans, ans a replacement hard drive. However, DS forgot to include a new Sata 6 cable to replace the one which was broken and which had been previously discussed for hours with DS technical support. Instead of overnighting me the cable, they "encouraged" me to go to Best Buy. So my adventure continued into the evening last night going to two Best Buys and a CompUSA, none of whom had the correct cable. Now I have to go to TigerDirect to look for the cable today. Not really what I wanted to end up doing to get my 5k+ rig in working order.

As to the fans, the cooler master R4's arrived, but the connectors were not long enough (the connectors on the default fans were very long). One would think DS would realize that I needed extenders for these fans. The good thing is that I found these at CompUsa and was able to install the cooler masters.

Sorry to hear about that, if you haven't ordered the cable yet, email me today and we'll overnight you a cable and some extenders so you have them this Saturday. I'll also look into how we forgot the SATA cable.

Thanks for the quick reply. I reviewed the order and it looks like Robert forgot to include the replacement SATA cable in the shipping request, I'm not sure why, perhaps it was an oversight or he may have thought you had extras in your accessories box?

Nevertheless, we'll get the items to you today via Overnight and with Saturday delivery.

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